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Is a Sea Change Coming for New Horizons Heliospheric Science?

UniverseToday·2026/9/2 01:03:23🔗 原文

📌 概要

If you visit the New Horizons mission website frequently, you'll notice that the spacecraft continues to generate excellent science as it plows its way through the Kuiper Belt. It recently woke up fro

⚡ 关键要点

  • If you visit the New Horizons mission website frequently, yo

New Horizons joins the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft, as well as Voyager 1 and 2 in traveling through the outer parts of the Solar System. Funding shortfalls may cut off the New Horizons heliophysics science data later this year. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Southwest Research Institute

If you visit the New Horizons mission website frequently, you'll notice that the spacecraft continues to generate excellent science as it plows its way through the Kuiper Belt. It recently woke up from its latest hibernation period in good health and is transmitting data it gathered back to Earth. The spacecraft, in addition to studying the Jupiter system in 2007, the Pluto system in 2015, and the Kuiper Belt Object Arrokoth in early 2019, has been doing some other fascinating solar system science since then thanks to two mission extensions in 2016 and 2023. Now, as a result of budget cuts at NASA, an important part of the NH science mission could end as early as October of this year.